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35.
Paeonia emodi sect. PAEON SUBSECT. foliolatae lactiflora GROUP
35.
P.emodi Wall. ex Royle, Ill. Bot. Himalayan Mts. 57
(1834); Wallich, " Cat." no. 4727 (1831), nomen
subnudum; Bot. Mag. t. 5719 (1868) ; Hook. f., Fl. Brit.
India, 1, 30 (1872) ; Baker in Gard. Chron., N. Ser.
21,829 (1884) ; Lynch in Journ. Roy. Hort. Soc. 12,
437 (1890) ; Basu, Ind. Med. PI. 1, 36, t. 23 (1918) ;
Coventry, Mid Flow. Kashmir, I, 19, t. 10 (1923) ; F. C.
Stern in Journ. Roy. Hort. Soc. 68, 129 (1943).
Syn.
P.anomala L. var. emodi (Wall.), Huth in Engl.
Bot. Jahrb. 14, 269 (1891).
P.officinalis
L. sec. Hook. f. & Thorns. Fl. Ind. 60 (1855), non L.
emend. Willd.
Description.
Stem 30-75 cm. high, glabrous, light green, bearing two to
four flowers. Lower leaves biternate ; leaflets
usually decurrent and confluent at the base, entire or often
deeply divided into two, or the terminal leaflet into three
segments, leaflets or segments elliptic, narrowed to the base and
to the acuminate apex, 12-17 cm. long, varying greatly in width
from 1.5 cm. to 5.5 cm., dark green and glabrous above (very
minutely puberulous along the veins), sometimes lighter green and
glabrous below. Flowers 8-12 cm. across. Petals
obovate, white, 4-5 cm. long, 2-4 cm. wide. Stamens about
1.5 to 2 cm. long, filaments and anthers yellow. Carpels
usually one, rarely two, densely hispid, hairs yellowish.
Follicles 1.5-2.6 cm. long.
Distribution.
India : ------------
Paeonia
emodi is a very beautiful paeony found in the United Provinces
of India, Kashmir and Chitral. It is like P.lactiflora in
having more than one flower to a stem and in the long leaflets up
to 17 cm. long, but differs from P.lactiflora in the
leaflets, which are longer and not scabrid along the margins, and
in the carpel, which is nearly always solitary and densely hairy
with short yellowish hairs. The flowers are always white. It is
found at about 7500 feet. Huth draws attention to the presence on
all the main veins on the otherwise glabrous upper side of the
leaves of an uninterrupted line of delicate small hairs just
visible through a lens. These are particularly visible in fresh
specimens but seems to rub off on older dried specimens. P.emodi
is a diploid.
P.emodi
is hardy in the south of England in well protected places and
seems to grow best amongst shrubs where it is protected from the
early morning sun.
There
is a very beautiful form of this paeony known as
P.X emodoff which has been distributed from the
Glasnevin Gardens in Dublin. It grows up to 100 cm. (3 ft. 4 in.)
in height and makes a big bush in the garden. Sir Frederick Moore
informs me that it is said to be a cross between P.officinalis
alba and P.emodi and that P.officinalis alba is
the female parent. Comparison with dried specimens of P.emodi
and with plants raised from seed of the wild P.emodi
reveals no differences except that it is larger in all its parts
and grows to a greater size. Again, it comes true from seed and is
a diploid like P.emodi so that it is highly improbable that
it can be a hybrid with P.officinalis, a tetraploid,
as its seed parent. I,
therefore, conclude that it is no more than a specially
robust form of P.emodi
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